Curtis Thorne, PhD
Office Room Number: UACC 4947
Lab Room Number: UACC 4906
Lab Phone: (520) 626-3265
Links
Curtis A. Thorne, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Arizona and a member of the University of Arizona Cancer Center. He earned his B.S. in Biology from Baylor University in 2000 and conducted breast cancer research at Baylor College of Medicine in the laboratory of Dr. Adrian Lee. He completed his Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University in 2010 under the mentorship of Dr. Ethan Lee, with a focus on Wnt signaling. Dr. Thorne then pursued postdoctoral training as an American Cancer Society Fellow at UT Southwestern Medical Center in the laboratories of Drs. Steven Altschuler and Lani Wu, where he investigated intestinal stem cells and drug resistance in colon cancer. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Thorne is a co-founder of two biotechnology companies: ProxyBio, which develops organoid-based drug testing platforms, and Branch Therapeutics, a cancer therapeutics company focused on targeting tumor-specific vulnerabilities.
Degrees
- PhD
Teaching Interests
Combining chemical biology and computer vision approaches to discover cellular communication mechanisms controlling cell fate, self-organization and disease progression of regenerative tissues
Research Interests
Our work utilizes the fascinating characteristics of intestinal stem cells to address fundamental questions in cell and cancer biology: How do cells identify, measure, and respond to each other and to their environment? What are the signals that control the renewal and regeneration of tissues? How do these signals go wrong in cancer? Our long-term goal is to uncover an underlying circuit theory behind these behaviors – a set of predictive principles that tell us how complex functionality arises from simpler biological components. We have a particular interest in kinase networks that regulate healthy tissue homeostasis and become damaged in cancer. Through our quantitative high-throughput imaging and drug discovery efforts, we are finding new ways to understand and repair these networks.